Parameter evidence by kiran nazir

2. Evidence to set
parameters
Presented by:
Kiran Nazir

3. Outline
Introduction
 Parameters
– Null-subject parameter
– Wh-parameter
– Head-position parameter
Evidence to set parameter
 Positive evidence
 Negative evidence
 Direct negative evidence
 Indirect negative evidence

4. Introduction
• Innate linguistic knowledge which guides children
during language acquisition and defines the range of
possible human languages. (UG)
• Language faculty includes a set of universal
principles which guide the child in acquiring a
grammar.
• It is impossible that all aspects of the
grammar of languages are universal.

5. Conti….
• So UG helps us in two ways:
1.Principles
Certain invariant properties of
language.
1.Parameters
A small set of dimensions
along which languages can vary.

6. Parameters
Any aspect of language which can obtain a specific
value in a given language. Parameters vary from one
language to another. Parameters can change from one
language to another.
Types of Parameters:
• Null-Subject parameter
• Wh-parameter
• Head-Position parameter

7. Evidence to set parameters
According to Chomsky there are two
types of evidence which we might expect
to be available to the language learner,
namely:
1.Positive evidence
2.Negative evidence

8. Positive Evidence
• Positive evidence comprises a set of observed
expressions illustrating a particular
phenomenon.
• For example, if children’s speech input is
made up of structures in which heads precede
their complements, this
provide them with positive
evidence which enables them to
set Head-Position parameter appropriately.

9. Negative evidence
• Negative evidence might be of two kinds:
1.Direct negative evidence
2.Indirect negative evidence

10. Direct negative evidence
• Direct negative evidence might come from the
correction of children’s errors by other
speakers of the language.
• Correction plays a fairly insignificant role in
language acquisition, for two reasons:
Firstly: correction is relatively
infrequent: Adults simply don’t correct
all the errors children make.

11. Conti…
Secondly: children are notoriously
unresponsive to correction.
• Direct negative evidence might take the
form of self correction by other speakers.

12. Indirect negative evidence
• Indirect negative evidence is related to the
non-occurrence of certain types of structure.
• For example, if a child’s experience includes
no example of structures in which heads
follow their compliments, the child might infer
that the language is not a head-last
language.
• Children learn from indirect negative
evidence rather than direct negative evidence

13. Learnability problems
• The child would need to process a very large
chunk of experience in order to be sure that
non occurrence reflects ungrammaticality.
• It seems implausible that children store a large
chunk of experience and search through it.

14. Conti…
• Rather, as parameters have binary setting, and
when children learn a parameter through direct
evidence in binary setting, thee is no need left
of indirect evidence.

15. Which evidence is more significant?
• Learn ability consideration such as these
have led Chomsky to conclude that there is
good reason to believe that children learn
language from positive evidence only.
• “There is good reason to believe that children
learn language from positive evidence only”
(Chomsky)

16. No-negative-evidence hypothesis.
• The claim that children do not use
negative evidence in setting
parameters is known as the no-negative-
evidence hypothesis.

17. Conclusion
• In short positive evidence plays a virtual role
in acquisition process and negative evidence
plays fairly insignificant role in language
acquisition.

18. Any questions?